


take warning

by belovedmuerto



Series: An Experiment in Apathy [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, EiE, Gen, M/M, Nightmares, brain!sex, empath!John, empath-by-proxy!Sherlock, experiment in apathy, experiment in empathy, mentions of that rat bastard Seb Moran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a foul wind a’blowin. Through John’s head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take warning

**Author's Note:**

> As always, humongous thanks go to Castiron for being a wonderful beta. And somehow, I seem to have acquired a couple more recently, so equally huge thanks to PrettyArbitrary and thisprettywren for talking me through A LOT of this, as well as general hand-holding and sounding board duties.

John struggles towards the surface, towards consciousness, thrashing against the sheets twisted around his torso and legs. He lays panting in bed, staring at the ceiling for long moments, fighting to stop the tears that are coursing over his cheeks, fighting to slow his breathing and his heart rate.

He reaches out for the reassurance of Sherlock's presence, to tug--

\--on a connection that isn't there.

John bolts upright in bed, panting, a sob lodged in his throat, heaving, clutching at his own chest. The sheets are twisted tight around his legs, swaddling him, trapping him.

He reaches out for that link, his connection to Sherlock, and about gasps in relief to find it there.

Only Sherlock isn't feeling at all reassuring. John is momentarily overwhelmed by the wave of pain and panic that floods him, bowled over by the force with which it hits him, and the struggle to release himself from the sheets feels like it takes forever.

John pounds down the stairs--

Straight into the arms of Sebastian Moran.

Sebastian is wearing a truly frightening smile, far sicker and more twisted than any John had ever seen on Moriarty or anyone else, and he catches John, grabs at him with both hands, arresting his momentum and bracketing his face in a bizarrely intimate embrace.

John screams, the sound torn from him while Moran grins that rictus grin at him. He can't stop Moran's onslaught, the tidal wave of thick, black hatred that is shoved into his head, forced there, swamping him, dragging him under, sucking him down like a riptide, like a vortex, a whirlpool, a black hole. John keeps screaming until he can’t, until he feels his throat filling with the sludge, choking him.

He fights it, but it’s no use, it has coated everything, it is everywhere inside him, filling him up, overpowering him, pounding on all sides, eliminating everything that makes him John. All the safe spaces in his head are awash in thick black goo, in hatred, in the darkest of desires, in anger. There is nowhere for him to run to, nowhere for him to hide, and John can do nothing but drown in it.

Sebastian’s hands slide around to the back of his neck. It’s an intimate gesture, an incredibly familiar one, something Sherlock does all the time, one hand against the nape of his neck in comfort, seeking reassurance, giving and receiving. John wants to pull away, to scream, to do something, but he can’t. He’s powerless; Moran has complete control of his emotions and, somehow, his body. John follows Moran’s lead, across the lounge, to Sherlock.

Sherlock is bound to one of their kitchen chairs, gagged and bloody and swollen, in the middle of the lounge; recognizable more because of the way he feels in John’s head than by his appearance, as his features are strangely distorted, almost blurred. His relief at seeing John is nearly tangible, and incredibly short-lived. It’s obvious that Moran has already been to work on Sherlock while John slept and dreamed upstairs, and it is just as obvious what John has to do, will do, must do, no stopping him.

John tries to scream again, tries to deny, to fight the urge, the impulse, the overwhelming need that fills him at the sight of Sherlock. He can see what he’s doing through the sludge that covers his real self and renders him powerless. There’s nothing he can do to stop it, as his body slides out of Moran’s grip and crosses the last few steps to Sherlock.

Sherlock looks up at him, pleading with his eyes. He’s crying.

John can feel Sherlock trying to get through to him, feel the little bees hurling themselves at the sludge. They’re too weak to break through, they only get stuck and drown, and Sherlock’s despair burrows into John’s chest.

John sobs, watching with blurred vision as his hands slide around Sherlock’s long slim neck, as they start to squeeze.

There are tears streaming down Sherlock’s face, he isn’t even attempting to stem their flow. What’s the point in that? His eyes flick to Moran and back to John, and he nods once, a lifetime of conversation in that gesture, and shuts his eyes.

Under the sludge that coats him, John collapses, barely able to contain his grief as his body slowly strangles his best friend to death; he is paralyzed, unable to do anything against the murderous hate layered over his own emotions. He knows Moran did that on purpose, not bothering to integrate, only bashing him over the head with the emotions that would make him kill, leaving him free to feel it, to watch from beneath them and know the whole time that he is powerless against the stronger projective empath’s desires.

Moran laughs at him, low and menacing.

John tries to shy away from that sound, from the primal fear it inspires. He is freed from the sludge just after the life has gone out of Sherlock’s body, and he collapses before his friend, sobbing, terrified, despairing.

He can feel Moran crouch behind him.

“This is all I ever wanted,” Sebastian croons in his ear.

\----

John wakes up with a choked sob stuck in his throat. For several long moments he fears that he’s still asleep before realizing that, no, this is real. He’s really awake now. The sheets are tangled around him, he is drenched in sweat, and he can barely breathe around the pain in his chest, the despair. He lays panting in bed, staring at the ceiling for long moments, fighting to stop the tears that are coursing over his cheeks, fighting to slow his breathing and his heart rate. He fights free of the sheets only to flop back in the bed, curl up on his side--the recovery position, and don’t think he isn’t aware--and tries to even his breathing, tries to stay quiet, to calm down, not to let this escalate into an actual panic attack.

 _Only a dream_ , he manages to think. _Only a dream._

A few moments later, there is the sound of the bedroom door opening, then shutting again with a click. John must not have heard the footsteps coming down the hall over the harshness of his own breathing, over the pounding of his heart, and now he holds his breath, listening intently.

“John?” Sherlock asks, voice probably very quiet, but sounding like shouting to John’s ears.

John doesn’t--can’t--answer.

A rustle, as a dressing gown is shucked and hung up, and then the shifting of the bed as Sherlock lays down next to him.

John lets out his breath, tries to breathe deeply around the pain still in his chest.

Sherlock stays quiet beside him, not moving, not touching him, just breathing, deeply and not quite silently. “You were projecting,” he says, after a while. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.”

John doesn’t say anything, but he tries to feel an apology at Sherlock. He’s not sure it works, so he goes back to trying to calm himself.

After long minutes, during which John’s fight or flight instincts finally start to ease, and the despair in his chest dissipates a little with each counted inhale and exhale from Sherlock--who is breathing audibly on purpose--John starts to relax.

Behind him, Sherlock moves slowly, telegraphing his movements as well as possible in the darkness, gathering the sheets from where they are tangled at the end of the bed and straightening them, pulling them over both their bodies. John feels them come to rest softly against him and flinches, still over-sensitive after the nightmare. Along with the coverings Sherlock lays a gentle layer of calm, of comfort over him. Just enough to make it a little easier to breathe, just enough to make that ball of pain and fear in his chest seem a little less sharp around the edges. John sighs.

Sherlock settles next to him, close enough that John can feel his warmth but not so close as to be cloying, as to be touching, not yet. John is nearly stupefied at how badly he wants that distance erased, and he has no idea how to express that. Sherlock puts his hand on John’s shoulder, a single point of contact.

John slowly starts to fade, to drift back towards sleep, despite the ache, despite that inarticulable need for _something_ ; it is, after all, the middle of the night, and unlike some people he tries to maintain a fairly normal sleep schedule. He gasps, unbidden, when Sherlock withdraws his hand. He probably whimpers, though he’s not sure. He certainly feels it like a physical ache. Here in the dark it’s almost ok for him to be vulnerable, to want comfort, to want shelter against the storm, just for a little while.

Sherlock’s hand returns, and John doesn’t waste time on thought, he grabs that hand and tugs, keepings tugging until Sherlock takes the hint and moves closer, until they’re spooned together. John finally feels able to draw a deep breath, and he does so, letting it out slowly.

It’s been a while, since they’d slept like this, spooned together, comfortable and relaxed. John slips into sleep before he’s even realized that the pain in his chest is gone.

\----

He wakes up a few hours later, when the sun has just cleared the horizon, and feels far better rested than he would have thought he would be capable of, after a dream like that. John knows, instinctively, that this is thanks to the lanky detective currently wrapped around him.

John twists a little, and Sherlock rolls away and stretches. “You slept,” he observes, looking at John with sleepy, relaxed eyes.

“You didn’t,” John returns, stretching out and then twisting again, to face Sherlock.

Sherlock shrugs.

John reaches out across the few inches that separate them, laying his hand against the back of Sherlock’s neck. It’s a familiar and comforting thing, to both of them, and it twinges something in John’s head, for the first time ever, and he flinches, though he tries to hide it, the pain and fear that the memory of that dream incite.

“Stop that,” Sherlock admonishes, his eyes clouding with concern that John pretends not to see. “Don’t.”

Don’t let it affect you. Don’t let it seep into our relationship. Don’t bring him into this. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Sherlock shifts over, closer to John, until their foreheads meet. John lets his eyes fall shut.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t do that either.” Sherlock’s voice is quiet, but there’s frustration there.

_Is there anything I can do?_

“Shh,” Sherlock murmurs. With a sigh, he pushes good things into John’s head. “Is this all right?”

“Mmm,” John sort of replies. But he relaxes a fraction, gathers those things up and pushes them back, plus some.

Sherlock sighs, content, and pushes back. Soon they are both sighing, fingers clutching, John’s against Sherlock’s neck and Sherlock’s against his hip, their legs tangled together, pleasure building between them, back and forth. John isn’t sure where he stops and Sherlock begins at the end, both of them full to the brim, thoughts hazy, emotions high and thrumming along unstimulated nerve endings, just before he whites out with the force of the pleasure rocking through his body.

But nothing lasts forever.

\----

 _I couldn’t breathe._ It echoes in John’s head, though he tries to let it go. It cannot possibly mean what he fears it means. _I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe._ It can’t mean that, no. Not that he was somehow actually choking Sherlock in his sleep; he’s not able to project like that, that’s impossible. Or at least not probable. It was just a figure of speech, or it was that Sherlock couldn’t breathe because John couldn’t breathe, or something. It wasn’t that John came close to actually killing Sherlock while he was asleep.

Because that would be bad. To say the least. John rubs at the back of his neck and tries to concentrate on the scene before him.

Greg is stood next to him just inside the crime scene tape. He keeps looking at John sidelong, and that’s at least as distracting and frustrating as his own thoughts, but thankfully nowhere near as terrifying. Annoying, though. Yes, very annoying.

And then there’s Sherlock.

He’s acting more manic than usual, more brusque, more rude, more everything. More. Just more. He’s frustrated and on edge and he seems to want simple quiet; quiet within, quiet without.

Things he won’t get, not with John there. Not with John anywhere near him. Always there, always around, and always in Sherlock’s head, as Sherlock is always in John’s.

 _Out out out out I need to get out._ The thought pops into John’s head unbidden, and he stops for a brief moment to look at it. To examine it from all angles. Then he shoves it away, far into the back corners of his mind, and smothers it with all the guilt it inspires, glancing over, across the body to Sherlock, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

Sherlock is whirling about like a mad thing, muttering to himself, examining details with his little magnifier, hurling abuse occasionally at a smirking Anderson, who is stood nearby. He glances at John with a question in his eyes, so yes, he did notice John’s sudden surge of guilt, but he is distracted almost immediately by the dead woman’s right foot, and John breathes a sigh of relief and hopes that Sherlock will let it go, forget about John’s guilt. There’s a chance. A slim one.

John’s willing to beg, if it comes to that.

The remnant emotions of the crime lick at the edges of John’s consciousness, distracting him from his own guilt at odd intervals. His shields, thankfully, keep the brunt of it out, but the rest of those little threads of emotion don’t seem to be filtering through as quickly or as well as they should. Pain, and fear, despair, and helplessness. They seem to latch onto John’s own frustrations, his own fear and increasing despair--

“John, you all right, mate?” Greg interrupts his thoughts. “You’re looking a bit peaky.”

John blinks at Greg. It takes several long moments for the question to sink in. “Yeah,” he finally answers. “Yeah, I’m fine. Uh, I didn’t. Didn’t sleep well last night.”

Greg looks like he wants to do something, clap John on the shoulder maybe, but he refrains, for which John is incredibly thankful, because he can feel Greg’s concern already and it eats at him, like all the rest of the things in his brain, poking and prodding at him. Greg smiles at him instead, smirks at him. “Sherlock keeping you up, then?”

John wishes he’d never said anything to Greg about the brain shagging thing. Goddammit. He’ll never hear the end of it. He rolls his head, side to side, back, feeling his spine creak in protest and ignoring it, compressed vertebrae be damned.

Several feet away, Sherlock jumps to his feet with an air of finality about him.

“That’s my cue,” John mutters to Greg.

“Text me when you get it out of him,” is all he says in reply, nodding. He strides off in one direction, shouting for his team to get to work, as Sherlock strides off in the other, ducking under the crime scene tape and heading towards the road.

John hurries to catch up to him.

Sherlock ignores him, and it’s a strange, uncomfortable sort of ignoring, as though Sherlock doesn’t know what to say. And Sherlock _always_ knows what to say, and how to say it. He makes things as painful as possible without even trying.

John stares at his back, and vows to try harder, to be all right instead of this jumbled, confused mess. John tries desperately not to want to run away.

\----

Molly is hovering, her hands clasped together in front of her while Sherlock examines the body. She keeps glancing between the two of them, a tiny furrow between her eyes. John is dreading her opening her mouth.

Which is awful, and he knows it. He feels terrible.

More terrible.

Whatever. Fuck.

It’s a different body than the one they’d just come from seeing, but Sherlock thinks that it may be related. Possibly. That’s the sense John has got from this. Maybe.

He can’t even tell anymore, he might be wrong. And Molly really needs to keep her goddamn eyes to herself.

“I’m going for coffee.” John turns on his heel and heads for the morgue doors.

Sherlock only grunts in response. John takes it to mean ‘two sugars in mine, please.’

He tries not to stomp down the hall towards the lift, but he’s not sure it works. It’s only a few moments before he hears footsteps behind him, hurrying to catch up.

Fuck.

“John, wait up,” Molly calls.

He stops and turns, schooling his expression into something friendly and not irritated and possibly near something akin to a breakdown. Or at least a screaming fit. He’s not quite sure he manages even that, judging from the look on Molly’s face.

She almost knocks into him in her haste, and she doesn’t move back far enough, standing just inside where John would like her. And she’s looking at him with concern, with sympathy, but she isn’t quite meeting his eyes. Why is she studiously looking at his forehead?

He hates it. She likes him. Which is great, he likes her. She’s a good woman, smart and with a sly, wicked, morbid sense of humor that he hadn’t expected but really appreciates--it shouldn’t have surprised him, she does work with dead people. But she’s insightful too, and John appreciates insight in people. It makes him feel less uncanny.

Except now. Now he just wants her to go away. He doesn’t--

Oh shit. Molly is hugging him.

 _Out out out out out get out get out get out._ He can’t breathe, he can’t move, and it just goes on until he finds himself relaxing into Molly’s firm, sweet-smelling embrace. It hurts and he doesn’t want this, but he can’t help return the hug.

And then she lets go, just as sudden, taking a step back and blushing at him.

For a moment, they stare at each other, and then Molly blushes harder, and smiles, a bit nervously, a bit unsure.

“You looked like you really needed a hug, John. Um. You looked--”

John ducks his head. He can’t stand the concern on her face, in her brain. He wants to run, and it’s making him twitch, the need to get out, the need to face her, face this, Be All Right, until he really is all right. Which may be never, and isn’t that a wonderful thought. Jesus.

"Why don't you go home and make Sherlock, yanno, do this. For a while. You, uh, you look like you could use it. From. From someone who. Matters. Not someone who's just an. Acquaintance.”

John stares at her. Where? What?

“I know it’s none of my business, John. And I know. How he is. I mean. We all do. But you’re. You’re the exception. And you should. Um. I’m interfering, I know. But he loves you, I can tell. And you. Um. I know you feel. Um. Gosh, I should shut up. You seemed like you needed a hug, John, is all. I hope you two. Um, make up soon. I’m sure you will. I’ll shut up now.”

Molly blushes for a moment longer, awkward speech over, and heads back to her morgue at a clip. John can’t tell if she’s worried about what Sherlock is getting up to or simply desperate to get away from him after the hug and the convoluted explanation thereof.

 _I need to get out of here_ , he thinks. John turns and walks away, headed for the nearest exit. Screw the coffee.


End file.
